When Ahmed al-Sharaa entered Damascus in December 2024, he had already taken the world by surprise twice. Weeks earlier, most analysts thought Syria’s civil war was frozen and Bashar al-Assad was going nowhere. By launching a lightning advance from its Idlib stronghold, then overthrowing the regime and dissolving its military in one fell swoop, the forces of Sharaa’s Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) eliminated their primary opponent in Syria’s long w…
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